Spent a bit of time recently in the AKL and WLG dom lounges over the past few weeks. Catering in AKL seemed worse than in WLG (nasty bean and tomato slop at breakfast time in AKL was quite offputting), and general management of the lounge seemed sloppier.

Cas in point: at 1.30pm on a Sat in AKL there was *one* solitary bottle of red wine put out for the whole lounge. Unsurprisingly, it was empty. When prompted, the lounge staff got out another, but seemed astounded when I questioned whether there was anything besides that one red wine choice (it was Villa Maria private bin syrah - it turned out there was another option, Babich East Coast pinot noir I think, which was borderline undrinkable). They were equally astounded when I suggested that perhaps they should put out more than one bottle at a time, given the size of the lounge.

WLG just seemed calmer and better run, and the lunch spread better (though to be fair that was a weekday), plus the sweet items/pastries were definitely better.

To give credit to both, however, the baristas were in operation both times and turning out quite acceptable coffee, though the AKL one was very slow indeed. After a short night, this was very welcome.